This is driving me insane. There are literally 5 desktop monitor models in the market today that provide a natively scaled experience for macOS users. All over $1000. The only monitors that would provide the equivalent screen real estate of my 2005 30" Apple Cinema Display @ 2560x1600 are the $2800 Dell 6k and the $5000 XDR.

Apple released "retina" scaling in 2012. It's been more than 10 years.

I had a high dpi sony trinitron during the dot com crash. It’s been 25 years, not ten.

Linux (and all the Unix’s) had a huge advantage back then because of X11’s superior high dpi support.

I still don’t understand why they have spent the last ten years trying to switch from pixel perfect rendering with variable dpi to fractional scaling.

> I still don’t understand why they have spent the last ten years trying to switch from pixel perfect rendering with variable dpi to fractional scaling.

Is there even a difference, except for the calling it dp instead of virtual pixel? Fractional scaling should be able to render just as pixel perfect if you're not using legacy applications

Back when there were only “legacy applications” they were all pixel perfect and almost everything responded to the X11 DPI setting.

Then someone in Linux land decided that stuff should be blurry by default because that was the stop gap MacOS chose when they backported a DPI setting to MacOS X.

Has changing dpi ever done more than scaling text? I'm pretty sure it hasn't, which makes it strictly inferior because everything just looks weird and not at all like it should, with tiny icons to boot.

You’re 100% correct with the insanity. I ended up buying the last supported 27” 5K iMac with the intent of using it until support ends. Then I’ll replace the innards with a display driver board, making it an external display. This is a significant cost saving vs the equivalent Studio Display.

I'm not quite sure what you say is true.

Apple Notebooks have 224-254ppi, the external displays 218ppi. The only higher ppi displays from Apple are on the iphone, and they are not special, most decent (android) phones from 5 years ago have 400ppi+. Funnily Apple was dragging their feet in this space back then.

Apple is more consistent, but it really isn't hard to get 4k laptop displays now.

> Funnily Apple was dragging their feet in this space back then.

Isn’t that in part due to Apple being slow to adopt OLED along with its unusual subpixel arrangement which requires higher ppi to look good.

No matter the ppi, UIs still look worse on an OLED compared to an LCD. Simply because they don't have pixels arranged in a grid, and UIs have lots of straight lines in them, those lines will always look fuzzy, even if just a little bit. High-density "retina" LCDs, on the other hand, render straight lines extremely crisply.

Not really. Mainstream Android phones had high density OLED and LCD displays before iPhones.

For example, by the time of the iPhone 8's 326 PPI, LG had the G6 with a 564 PPI LCD.

My LG G3 had a 538ppi IPS display and it is from 2014, 9 years ago.

Now that I think about it, smartphones have stagnated a lot.

806 ppi for my Xperia XZ Premium from 2017

...and Openmoko phones had HiDPI screens around the time of the 1st-gen iPhone.

As I get older I care about bigger fonts and therefore bigger monitors. Higher resolution does nothing for me really. I need bigger fonts not better anti aliasing. My main is a 4k43"144hz which is basically the same dpi as a 27" 2560x1440 which I have 4 of in a semi sphere setup. If I ran that 4k at half the resolution to get nice fonts I'd have massive eye strain. Instead I can keep the monitors at a comfortable arms length so I don't squint up close and still get tons of text on screen.

I also get a lot better frame rates than pushing 5 4k or 8k screens.

I tried out apples absurd 8k display and it's just so small I'm getting half the text on the screen which is basically throwing money at Apple for no reason.

The 4k43 is glorious for games and for fusion360. Also as a grow light :)

I've been rocking 4k48"120hz for a couple of years now (an LG C1 48").

It's game changing, and the OLED shines when I do color sensitive work. It feels like having a huge canvas in front of me. Initially I tried doing fancy window locking arrangements and I still do that occasionally. But over time I moved towards treating it like a big desk that I can resize all my windows on as needed.

However, I would probably move down in size a little next time given the choice. 43" sounds sweet. The issue, at least two years ago, was that these smart TVs are massively subsidized. Mine cost about $1000 I think, probably cheaper now. While similar specs on slightly smaller monitor would be considerably more expensive.

EDIT: I just checked and the 43" 144hz OLED monitors I can quickly find are $1500+, while the updated version of my screen, the LG C2 48", is on sale in a local shop for $600.

This screen is a TV but it's still by far the best monitor I've ever had. The only minor problem is that low brightness and reflectivity of the screen means I had to reposition my desk, and it still becomes an issue for about 30 minutes every day when the sun moves to just the right position to bounce and reflect off the wall behind me on to the screen.

Would have done what you did but it literally won't fit:( my coworker has that at home it's amaze

For monitor I just look for screens with 87-94 PPI, for to avoid to scaling. Therefore the size of the monitor for me is determined by the combination of inches and resolution, what gives me centimeters of the screen.

     5:4  1280x1024 19" ( 37.68cm × 30.15cm )  86.27 PPI 
    16:9  1920x1080 25" ( 55.35cm × 31.13cm )  88.12 PPI
    16:10 1920x1200 24" ( 51.69cm × 32.31cm )  94.34 PPI
    16:9  2560x1440 30" ( 66.41cm × 37.36cm )  97.91 PPI
    16:9  2560x1440 32" ( 70.84cm × 39.85cm )  91.79 PPI
    16:10 2560x1600 30" ( 64.62cm × 40.39cm ) 100.63 PPI
    16:9  3840x2160 46" (101.83cm × 57.28cm )  95.78 PPI

People that are used to higher PPI may think those PPI have screen-door (to see the pixel), but for me this only uncomfortable if I see a 81 PPI monitor (16:9 1920x1080 27" [59.77cm × 33.62cm] ) at 45cm of distance. Anyway, I just want the sharpness and uniformity that only comes from not scaling either by the monitor or the operating system.

My ideal may be a 16:10, and better a 5:4, with 40cm of height and around 87-89 PPI, nevertheless the monitors with 16:10 aspect ratio use old generations panels what make me to discard them, IPS and VA ghosting. And TN doesn't exist there (at that size the angles limitation of TN would be an issue anyway, nevertheless for 1280x1024 19" is perfect). The modern panels are only under 16:9 aspect ratio.

Unfortunately for me I do not like the 16:9 aspect ratio for monitors due if it is small I'm losing visual space top and down like if it were a letter box, and if the monitor is big it forces to move the head much.

The matter is, I think the marketing of 2K, 4K, 8K is secondary, without knowing the panel size and the distance from what will be viewed firstly. So I usually recommend to do a table with the PPI predilection and width-height preferences. The one I use for to search monitors have the lines of text that gives the panel height with the font size I use more.

> The 4k43 is glorious for games and for fusion360

That gives a reference, 16:9 3840x2160 43" ( 95.19cm × 53.55cm ) 102.46 PPI

Maybe you see this from 65-90cm of distance, at least, due the width, case contrary you would have to move the head and even the body, what makes the fonts look tinny.

I guess the panel manufacturers introduced 16:9 as monitors -stopped developing panels with aspect ratios for computer monitors better said- for to avoid to have two lines of panels, computer monitors and TVs. Mere guessing.

PS: https://www.sven.de/dpi/

Woah, do you have a picture of this setup you can share? I'm really curious!

You're talking smartphone displays? You certainly don't need anywhere close to 300ppi on a computer monitor to have crisp fonts.

The point is only valid about desktop monitors, so I assume he meant 200ppi.

Yeah 200+, my bad!

Outside of the Apple ecosystem you have still apps struggling with high dpi, it is a pain to mix with non hdpi displays, less performance/higher power consumption.... and for what? A bit more relative crispness? Maybe I'm oldschool but native resolution even with visible pixel size looks way more sharper with OS ui borders than something that is scaled.

i'm no expert in display manufacturing, but as per my understanding driving higher refresh rate is much different challenge than creating more densly packed pixels.

display overclocking has been a thing for the longest time, which also implied that getting more refreshes is often a product of display controller and how reliably your display can work in higher voltage.

getting high yield on larger displays with high ppi is still tricky iirc, especially when some 1080p displays can still come with dead pixels.

i am sure companies would push for higher pixel count displays if economics were rightly aligned.

There are HiDPI displays on the top end models of pretty much every major manufacturer. They do command a premium however.